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Nancy Drew and the Case of the Rogue Ovaries

I am thinking I haven’t actually said what all is going on with my crazy ass body. Wait let me just skim my past posts to make sure…….well not directly at least. So as most of you have probably gathered, hubs and I have been having unprotected “pro-creation” type sex for over a year now. By the way, I simply loathe the term “trying to get pregnant”, no offense to anyone. It has always sounded so ridiculous to me, like we’re chastely sitting next to one another in a formal living room, holding hands with our eyes closed wishing it to happen. What you don’t have room specific visions like this? Anyhoo, as you might have guessed, it turns out our unprotected sex is exactly like our protected sex….whatcha gonna do? Well actually what am I gonna do, you might be asking? To tell you all the truth, I am not going to do anything for the time being…..okay technically that is a lie. I am doing the whole acupuncture thing and obviously tracking the temp and all that business. So I guess I am doing something, but I meant I am, as of now, not pursuing other avenues of intervention. I did at first….which is what brings me back to my post title…I have turned into a regular Nancy Drew about all this crap. You would think there was buried treasure awaiting someone who could investigate this issue the most. I have read and absorbed so much information regarding my situation that I consider myself the foremost expert on women like myself. Notice I said “I consider myself”, you all should definitely not consider me an expert of any kind. Especially considering I have been reading so much that I haven’t tracked my actual sources. So they could be bogus. More accurately I have used my investigatory skills to find answers that have helped me to at least deal with the patience aspect of this whole thing. At first when I got off the B.C. I was like a crazy fiend. Imagine Reefer Madness only about babies (if you haven’t seen Reefer Madness you seriously need to….the new musical one. It is hilarious! “listen to Jesus Jimmy, just say no to the marihwanaaaaa”…..hahahaha it is great.) Whoa don’t get me wrong, this has nothing to do with pot! I was just thinking of the crazed faces from Reefer Madness where they are looking like they will kill someone to get a joint. This is how I imagined I looked when I first started my pursuit of offspring. Obviously I never seriously considered doing anything crazy, but you know when you’re at a store and someone walks a little ways off leaving their baby in the stroller? That thought crosses your mind like ‘well this would be too easy”. Again not that I would ever do it and often times I linger there for a second monitoring the baby while the parent works their way back. Like I am providing overwatch to make sure some other hormonal lady doesn’t snatch the kid. As if I am saying ‘well if anyone gets to take the kid it is gonna be me’. Yeah have I mentioned how insane the female brain is? Weird. Anyhoo, like I said I started out being a crazy person ready to be pregnant and wanting to start filling my shopping carts with diapers, clothes, bedding, etc. I was able to rein all that in, obviously. I went to the doctor in August after I hit 63 days with no period and had repeated negative pee tests. She gave me aygestin to start my period and then brought me in on day 3 and day 21 to run hormone screening blood work. This was still the “crazy baby fiend” stage FYI. So I was engrossed in everything she told me about possibilities. She told me depending on my blood work we had a few options, Clomid being the first. She would let me try that for 3 cycles and do hormone testing at day 21 each cycle. Then if that didn’t work they would do the dye test to see if my fallopian tubes were open. Then test the sperm and all that business. The last option being moving into the more aggressive IVF options. Following each visit with her I spent days researching everything I could about these options. Would it be safe for me, the baby? etc. Just so you all know, I didn’t find anything disconcerting about Clomid….but still there was some resistance in the back of my mind. Something made me not jump on that bandwagon as much as I ached to. Here comes the hippie….just thought I would warn you. I haven’t given up on the whole Clomid route. In fact I sort of set a deadline for myself. I would give this until July or so and if things still weren’t looking good, then I would give the Clomid a go. But there is this huge part of me that just really wants this to happen on its own…and for now that is the part that is winning. I just have this certain feeling that it isn’t happening for a reason and that I need to give my body time to figure itself out. The whole idea behind B.C., sorry to bore you if you already know all this crap, is that it replaces your body’s natural hormone production. The hormone screening showed that my body has the estrogen production down pat, it is the progesterone that it was struggling with. Thus the no period for months on end, no ovulation, etc. I read that sometimes it doesn’t take your body any time at all to remember how to produce these hormones, sometimes it takes a few months, sometimes it takes years…..and sometimes it never happens. Don’t focus on that last one okay. It will get you down. So since technically I am the one who f’ed my body up, I figure I should be nice enough to give it a little time to see if it can do it on its own. Also, there’s a lot of research on women who have been on birth control for a long period of time…well not only was I on birth control for a long period of time, but I was also on a higher dose than normal. I started on your standard dosage, but I was having two periods a month, so I got bumped up. And I stayed up. Thinking back I probably should have spent a year on the higher dose and then tried to step it down, but whatcha gonna do? Can’t take it back now. So why go the hippie route? Well, for one, I am a big hippie. Okay maybe not a big hippie. But let’s examine the decisions I have already made towards my pregnancy and childbirth. 1) I plan to make many of my own maternity wear = hippie (but don’t worry it will be stylish…just the homemade fact makes it hippie). 2) I am going to have (nature willing) a home water birth = uber hippie. 3) Baby is gonna sleep in a hammock = hippie. Have you seen these hammocks? Research shows that the average baby sleeps through the night in less than 6 weeks because they simulate the womb. Okay I still need to research it to be sure there are issues with strangulation and such, plus I don’t want to spend money on something that they can only use for a short period of time. Not sure the weight limit. But anyway, that is my initial idea. 4) The hammock and bedding for the crib are going to be organic cotton = hippie. 5) I plan to cloth diaper = hippie. 6) I am gonna join a drum circle….okay that is a lie. The reason I am going the hippie route for now is because it seemed a little contradictory to my decisions thus far. I mean I am going to have a home water birth, but I am going to take drugs to get things started? It just seemed a little out of place. So that was the first thought. Then there are the less rational fear thoughts. Like ‘what if I am not supposed to have children and nature is trying to tell me something….like they are gonna have a third eye….or like that chick on Total Recall with three boobs’. Again I get that is not the totally rational way of thinking, but the thoughts are there. Then there is the whole thought that what if taking drugs to get things going will inhibit me to have a home birth. Like I said, I found no research that showed Clomid or other drugs affected the development or caused complications during pregnancy, but the medical skeptic in me always thinks that it could still do something. I wasn’t able to find any research that tracked Clomid babies with C-sections or induction or other complications, and I have known several people with no complications after taking Clomid. But that sneaking thought in my mind has helped me to stay patient. So what’s the deal with the ovaries? Here’s my “expert” hypothesis: Say the average time it takes a normal woman, who was on a normal dosage of b.c., one year to start regularly producing progesterone and estrogen That means it could take me twice as long (by the way I didn’t find conclusive evidence that it took many women a year to regulate….in fact I think the number is like 90% of women get a regular period within 3 months…bitches! But i have known a lot of women who have gone through this same thing and it seemed like some of them hit the year mark and then all of a sudden things started working….again I use “expert” loosely here people). But I am not too sure I can wait two years to see if things start working themselves out. We’ll see. I’ll decide in July. Okay so once I decided to give my body a chance, I started researching foods and other “progesterone” inducing techniques. Did you know there is progesterone creme? I didn’t either. That kind of freaked me out. So you rub progesterone on yourself? hmmm. That seems weird. I didn’t go that route. But I started looking into the healthy diet thing and the whole theory that fat increases your estrogen. Again I know the estrogen production is going fine, but maybe if I can reduce how much estrogen my body produces, by getting into better shape, then a light bulb will come on in my brain that says ‘oh wait, we should be producing progesterone too!’ (By the way, this is why I am a way funner expert that an actual doctor, because my research is peppered with random shit that my brain thinks up as well). Plus getting in better shape kind of goes with the whole not getting gigantic and huge plan. Which means the better shape I am in when I start out, the more of a chance I have at staying in shape while pregnant and not having as much work to do after the baby shows up. But I am secretly banking on that whole idea that some women who breast feed actually weigh less than they did before they get pregnant. This happened to my cousin and a couple other bloggers I’ve followed. Not gonna lie. I am kind of hoping for this. hahaha. Whoa this is getting to be an out of control blog entry! I didn’t mean to go into it this much. But when in Rome I guess. So anyway. I am being patient and here’s where things stand. After I did the whole start my-period-hormone-screening-figure-out-my-options-and-decide-to-be-patient thing, I allowed myself to have a natural cycle that lasted….200 Days! I know it was ridiculous. That is over six months. Now first off, I totally tricked the tampon companies out of some major cash on that one, but it was extremely frustrating! Coincidentally I read Taking Charge of Your Fertility a couple of weeks before I ovulated. So I started tracking my temps just in time and part of me was like ‘this was meant to be!’. But, it didn’t work that time around. Okay, no bigs…I am sure this cycle will be shorter. So I continued to eat healthier and exercise more. Keep my stress levels low….which is so much easier with acupuncture and exercise and healthy eating. Of course I already knew this stuff, but don’t you just love it when the world reminds you that you’ve been a stressed out dumb-ass? Me too. Annnddddd…..I am still waiting. It is day 51 today and although I am still waiting for confirmation….my temp spiked on Saturday! Woohoo! Okay now obviously I am rooting for getting preggo, but in reality (i.e. trying not to get too excited) I am just keeping my fingers crossed that the temp will stay high and not drop back down and become a “false alarm”. Good news is I have a game plan should this not be it. The acupuncturist gave me some herbs to take. They coincide with your cycle, so she said I can wait to start them on the first day of my period, or try to guess where I am in my cycle and start with the coinciding bottle. BTW the “prescription” is to take 5 pills 3 times a day. That is an insane amount of pills! I am going to look like a ‘roid popper! Now, you’re not supposed to take them if your preggo, so I am kind of holding out to see whether the temp will stay high for a couple more days. But the good news is, having this “not preggo” plan, is actually making it easier on my I think. It is kind of like ‘well no matter what happens there is something to look forward to’. Obviously one outweighs the other, but the idea of having an option that might help is really making me excited. Seriously if you have read this entire post, kudos to you. It took me several days to write it, so I can’t imagine how bored and sidetracked you got while reading it. I will obviously keep you all posted as to what the temp does this week. I just keep telling my rogue ovaries to keep it up for 14 more days ladies!. I think they’re figuring it out though.

Glad to read your story again – I'm not sure I ever knew it. I wish I had the patience that you have, but after nearly a year of hardly any periods, I knew I needed to go to the doctor. So far the Clomid seems to be regulating my body, but obviously I'm not pregnant yet so we'll see. I don't think Clomid helps you to get pregnant – it just helps you ovulate, and then we have to do the rest of the work. 🙂 Good luck this cycle and here's to hoping it happens naturally by July!

My lady bits are stupid bitches and I hate them. I had issues getting pregnant and then staying pregnant. Asshole uterus. But there is hope! I have two very stinky but very lovely babies despite my suck ass insides. I hope things go your way very soon! Even if you're doing the hippie thing…;)

I love that there's no "right" way to get pregnant and have a baby and raise a child. We all do it our own way. I definitely think that living in CO these past few years (like you!) has brought out more "hippie" tendancies in me. Back in MN I'd have called you crazy if you said I'd want a natural birth (no drugs – possibly at home, but that depends on some things) and be considering cloth diapers, etc. Don't get me wrong – my Mom did all that with us and she was a MinneSOOOtan, but in my circle of MN girlfriends at least, it was the traditional go off b.c., get preggo, take pain meds, have baby in hospital. That's part of the reason I've turned to blogging – NONE of them that understand what I'm going through, and I'm like you – I've researched SO MUCH that I know more than your average bear about my body and my cycles and…yeah… the "just relax and it will happen" advice just got overused by my easily preggo friends. At ANY rate, sorry for the rambling comment, but I have a lot of thoughts about everything you wrote. 🙂 I agree with Steph – Clomid doesn't actually help you "get" pregnant (i.e. get the spermie & eggie hookin' up) – it just convinces the damn egg to GET DOWN THAT TUBE ANYWAY… or something like that… that's part of the reason I decided on the Clomid route, even though I want everything else as natural as possible. At any rate, *fingers crossed* that both you and Steph have high temps for the next 9 months – how great would that be?!! Thinking of ya…

i think you are very courageous and doing what god wants you to do in this pregnacy thing>>>you know the first thing that came out of his mouth was' multipy and replentish t4he earth and tha4t seems to be important to you